Yet Lib Dems gained a ton of seats with over 70, and Reform only 4 at the time of me writing my message. Lib Dem wasn’t that far behind total percentage of the vote vs. Reform, 12% vs, 14%, which considering they are almost opposite platforms means we shouldn’t be talking about Reform in isolation.

Labours total vote percentage is down from 2017 and only a few percent up from 2019, so the Tories collapsed losing about 20% of the vote from 2019. Labour following the center right meant they lost more moderate votes to Lib Dems and were not trusted on right wing issues as Reform picked up those votes.

Normal hifi gear, particularly second hand can sound way way better than generic computer crap. However normal hi-fi speakers are designed to work best a certain distance from the wall **and ** a certain distance from you. These distances vary between speakers but it is important to check this before spending any cash as some speakers need to be many feet from you, which isn’t always remotely practical for most pc setups.

I went with Dali Minutes for this reason, so they can be right on the wall and really close to me. I paired mine with a Rega Brio amp and RME ADI 2 USB DAC, then added a monitor audio sub later.

Most proper studio monitors are designed for near field listening they also make a good choice although they can be a little clean for some people’s taste.

UK you have the concept of black box car insurance that offered a substantial discount for having either a dedicated device installed into the car or an app on your phone that tracks a bunch of stats as you drive. It’s as shit as it sounds as it marks you down for every little infringement such as driving at peak times because that’s more dangerous. Get enough points and you can have your policy cancelled. In the UK there are knock on effects for ever having an insurance policy cancelled and you have to legally declare you did when asked.

While you can uninstall the app good luck making a claim if you don’t have it installed with data for that journey. They’d also be pretty suss with no data over an extended period of a few months.

Worst part of these is that it’s expensive to switch to a non black box policy when you can afford to as you get older and more experienced.

Not the OP but having got rid of my Flair as it was too painful to get great coffee out of at 6am every morning, the learning curve is very steep unless you are already familiar with making espresso.

While parts don’t need to be made to the same standard nor do you need the same depth of safety components, I completely disagree that we should not be applying the same hygiene to part province and maintenance schedules. Obviously this should apply to track side components such as signalling, the track etc. as well, just like it should for the parts of an airport that a plane will interact with.

Avoiding utter maintenance shit shows like the train crash in India that killed 300 people seem just as attractive to fix as they do with planes. Or the toxic spills that America has had that may not have killed as many people but are still expensive and hugely disrupting.

Part of getting maintenance schedules followed properly and using quality parts is right to repair, part availability, and being able to prove part provenance and quality. A method to audit a part is essential for this, if we do whats needed by allowing 3rd parties to make parts to original spec for a reasonable cost, like we should to lower cost. Lower cost, more chance companies will avoid cutting corners, particularly if there is a proper audit trail for the part and you can actually prove that it is the *part *as well.

The article is about right to repair, third party parts, and systems designed to block both of them, which I applied to an existing problem that applies to planes for certain and almost certainly other forms of public transport. Even a shit idea can be repurposed to improving the common good.

Agree with you about the level of standards, there needs to be some for train and bus parts but not to aircraft standards.

I also agree any part manufacturer to be audited to which level they are working at and prove a chain of custody for that part. They grey and black markets need to be squeezed out as much as possible, obviously you have to give the end customer, airlines, rolling stock owners, etc. a cost incentive with right to repair to honor the system. As any system can be hacked or broken with enough of a cash incentive.

I think the OEM having to license, at a reasonable cost, the exact spec and design for a part to third parties is an important part of any right to repair. You cannot self repair if you cannot get replacement parts for a reasonable cost.

Its not hypothetical, its a widespread issue for aircraft: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/airline-scandal-fake-parts-scandal-b2459534.html

and did you even read what I wrote?

Dont get me wrong, I want a full right to repair enshrined in law and using a system like this just to prevent it is clearly wrong,

With the fake parts scandal for airplanes I wonder if this should be mandatory for parts that impact public safety for public transport like trains, buses, planes and so on.

Dont get me wrong, I want a full right to repair enshrined in law and using a system like this just to prevent it is clearly wrong, but if it could be adapted to allow for critical parts to be made under license by third parties and helped prevent fake parts then may be a small amount of good can come from this shitty practice.

There is a significant scalp market for the limited release Porsche and other premium cars in the UK. Its not uncommon to double your money on some cars just for sitting in the queue for the car for 12 months or so from using a small deposit of say £5k.

Hard part is getting on the list to buy one, you need to be in good standing with the dealer from purchasing a lot of cars, which most scalpers are. You can then sell the place on the waiting list, or finance the car, run it for a short period if you want, then sell it for a big profit.

Its also a terrible way of reducing charging time for anything that doesn’t have an enormous battery like an electric Lorry/Semi. Even then its like 30 minutes for 70% charge for the Tesla Semi, which is roughly the same as a mandated break anyway for the driver.

What is more useful is making sure all EV batteries are easily swappable by third parties as this will massively extend the lifespan of EVs if you do not need to go back to the main dealer for a much marked up battery replacement when the cars battery stops holding a useful amount of charge past the 10 year mark.

They would just exempt themselves from it as they did with both reporting on people accessing porn using the HoP network and with the investigatory powers bill.

When they did report on it, it was a shockingly high number for a place of work: https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/09/04/mps_binge_on_smut_theyre_trying_to_ban/

They wont have anything but a minimal budget to even research this properly, let alone employ the staff or setup the systems to manage it properly.

I realise China monitors a lot more than porn and their population is much much larger however they have between 20 and 50k working on it. Even if you cut down the scope you are still looking at thousands of employees to do this properly.

Yes I am aware of that, however the current way that is being looked at addressing the problem is moving the cabling to further within the car, which is just pathetic, like thieves wont just adapt to that.

Encryption really isnt as big a performance impact if it is done correctly, sure it is not cost neutral but ask Range Rover how much reputational damage they had with their piss poor security. They are still having 1 in a 300 brand new defenders stolen after adding what is pretty a traditional immobiliser and tracker.

As an example: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/2006/1/012071

The existing standards OBD-II and CAN Bus just aren’t fit for purpose for ICE cars let alone EVs. Too many keyless cars get hacked by the thief hacking into either system and overriding the lack of a key, even if it means cutting a hole in the boot lid to expose the CAN Bus connection as with some Range Rovers.

Its become a significant problem for a lot of cars. It used to be that they would break into your house to steal your key, then steal the car but now they do not need to do that. It can be done in a couple of minutes on some cars that do not properly protect the CAN Bus cable.

What we really need is a proper public/private key pair for the cars so that all comms is only authorised via the physical key fob. This needs to be touch authorised to prevent snoop attacks. Sticking it on the key would then mean right to repair is not blocked, if the main dealer has it then its a big blocker for right to repair.

Fiat implemented a “firewall” for their port, without the right device you cannot connect to it.

It was implemented to prevent thefts, people hack the car through the ODB port or through the CAN bus connection.

Its easier for them to lock down access rather than fix the fact you can drive a keyless car without the key.

Everything Dies by Spirted Adrift, its a cover of the Type O Negative song

UK it will be possible to buy the vaccine in the new year at some point but not currently. Assuming it works the same as the flu vaccine you can book and pay at Boots online ahead of time and just turn up.

Its really hard to get the vaccine for free for the more moderate at risk groups if you are under 65 now, it used to be over 50s.

There are ways around most things, but you’ll have to define this sandbox on your mobile as a lot of these can be prevented with the right additional product, obviously Microsoft being Microsoft isn’t going to give this away.

If you set up intune correctly (and its a requirement) you can prevent access to the entire of m365 including outlook unless they register their device and you can use allow lists for users who are approved to use their own devices, or just block them full stop while allowing company phones access.

If yours isn’t requiring registration, then its not setup to do so, you can very much enforce it, this is usually done via conditional access requiring that the device is registered before it can get access.

Often admins also forget to block web access from mobile devices, but that’s also blockable via the conditional access settings (and other ways, but conditional is how I would do it). Its not perfect as its using the user agent, which can be spoofed. Personally if the client needs that level of protection then web access should just be blocked for non company devices.

You can enforce that the company is added as a device manager, that’s usually how the device wipe is enforced. Access to personal data isn’t really what you are granting here, it is the ability to remote wipe the entire device.

Its a proper device management system with a ton of options. You can for example force users to only use an approved list of applications on their own device for company data.